Copa By Sea – Toronto

I had a fantastic experience at Copa By Sea, located in the Entertainment District of downtown Toronto. I was aware that Copacabana Brazilian Steakhouse was coming to Adelaide Street, but I didn’t not realize that a seafood offspring was also emerging in the same location. We were fortunate enough to make reservations a month in advance because the place was solidly booked for the night. A hint to potential diners – book your reservation for 6:00pm at the latest because it gets ridiculous after that, and I heard later reservations have to wait until a table lets up.

If you are not aware of the Copacabana chain, its an AYCE experience focused on delicious types of meats. The meat section of the restaurant is upstairs. Copa By Sea is the seafood counterpart offering a variety of seafood and sushi (also some meat selections) is located downstairs. Both restaurants have a dark setting (which I found it a bit hard to read the menu; mind you, I have bad eyes). Service was exceptional. Everyone was professional, super-friendly and good looking. Any request was not too much to ask. And the most important aspect of this AYCE establishment – they did not kick us out after 1.5 hours. We dined for 2 hours! A big PLUS in earning extra points in my book!

I tried to take as many pictures of what we ate as I could. The items that were brought to the table by servers were on skewers, and basically the meat/fish all looked the same – the fish were cut into cubes, so you can’t really judge the taste and goodness from the photo. So I will show you a few of these and just tell you what they are. You can go onto Copa By Sea website for the full menu offered.

We started out with some oysters and side dishes. Each guest was allowed 4 oysters. Additional request would cost I think $1.5 or something. There were three of us eating, but the waitress brought us 13 oysters. As for the side dishes, she brought out Lobster Mac & Cheese (it was fabulous, cheese was not bland and most important, I did not get a stomach ache from the cheese). There was also a nice salad (although could use a bit more salad dressing). Breaded calamari (it was good, safe), fries and onion rings (I did not try these):

Also on the menu as special orders for the guests (but no extra cost unless you want to order extra) was Ceviche – choice of shrimp, salmon or tuna. I chose the tuna. My little dish didn’t have much tuna in it. There were chick peas, I think I could taste cubes of watermelon, and lots of onion (I picked out the onion). Flavour was good, a little more zing would’ve been great. My friend chose the shrimp ceviche, and he received a decent amount of shrimp in his. I think the amount of fish you receive depends on how its scooped into the dish.

There was also nigiri sushi and sushi rolls offered. There were about five different kinds of Nigiri Sushi, and each guest was allowed one per kind. But I think the sushi rolls were unlimited. My friend ordered two pieces of the unagi sushi (I did not take a picture). And we had ordered a dynamite roll and a spicy salmon roll. They made a mistake and brought us a dragon roll instead of the salmon roll. I only ate one piece of the dynamite roll, because those two types of rolls aren’t my favourite (I would’ve really enjoyed the spicy salmon roll)… I only took a picture of the dragon roll.

Here is a picture of the ribeye steak that was brought to our table. We each ate two pieces each. It was delicious – tender, thick, juicy and not well done!

Here are also some pictures of the seafood that came to our table. The grilled shrimp was amazing. We did not realize there was scallop offered until we saw a server bypass our table to serve another table! Hmpf!!!! So we asked our waitress to have them come around to us, along with extra shrimp and ribeye steak. Also, ribs were offered (my table did not enjoy), peanut butter chicken (I took a piece but decided not to eat it). There was also teriyaki salmon, some grilled white fish (can’t remember the name), curried salmon, bacon wrapped cod, etc.

Also at the salad bar was help-yourself crab legs, sashimi (was okay, seemed a little gummy) and cold shrimp, along with olives, peppers (and I did not realize there was bread).

For dessert we had a tray of grilled pineapple and chocolate covered bananas. By now we just did not have any more room in our stomachs! I did eat the grilled pineapple because I love grilled pineapple!

There’s a special price of $30 for AYCE at Copa By Sea right now. I don’t know when it’ll end, because I also saw this price last month. The alcoholic drinks were a bit expensive. But overall, the combined total of $50 including tax and tip was a really good deal! The quality was right up there and food limitless. We could barely get out of our seat after we finished eating two hours later. Oh, as we were leaving out the door, the dancers were performing upstairs in the Copacabana restaurant!

(Sorry, photos are all over the place, I will streamline them a little bit later).